USA TO BATTLE BERMUDA IN 50 OVER TOURNAMENT

Fresh from a dominant performance in the 2013 ICC Americas Division One T20 tournament in Florida, the USA Men's National squad will participate in a series of practice games against Bermuda. The USA Senior Men's team competes in the Pepsi ICC World Cricket League (WCL). This competition is a qualification structure for the 2015 ICC 50 Over Cricket World Cup. These additional 50 over practice matches will be played at the Lauderhill Stadium and at Brian Piccolo Park in Fort Lauderdale. Three games will be played over the coming week in a bid to select the final squad of 14 players that will represent the USA in the ICC WCL Division 3 Tournament to be played in Bermuda from April 28th to May 5th .

The first game is Tuesday 26th March commencing at 10.00 am at Brian Piccolo Park. Currently the USA team is in Division 3 of the WCL and plans to progress to the next phase of qualification. Should the team finish in the top 2 in this tournament, the USA will progress to participate in a World Cup Qualifier to be played in New Zealand in early 2014.

There have been some changes to the T20 Squad that played last week, with the most notable inclusion being Josh Dascombe from Queensland, Australia. Josh is a US citizen and has represented Queensland at the Under 19 level twice. He is a left arm orthodox spinner and middle order batsman. He represented his A-Grade team Sandgate-Redcliffe in the XXXX Gold Premier Grade over the weekend, before boarding a flight from Brisbane to Fort Lauderdale.

USACA CEO Darren Beazley explained the rationale behind inviting Josh to the US; "USACA is committed to identifying the best possible talent to represent the US wherever they made reside in the world. USACA undertook a bold recruitment initiative and advertised on its web site for US citizens that are talented cricketers playing at an elite level in their country to contact us. Josh did that and USACA undertook an extensive process to assess his progress to date, including speaking with coaching staff from Queensland Cricket.

The Queensland Cricket High Performance staff were very supportive of the initiative and believe that this move will play an important part in his overall development". Dascombe who turns 20 in May this year, finished in the top 10 wicket takers in the final Australian Under 19 Carnival that he participated and has been training with the full Queensland squad. He is currently at university studying a Bachelor of Business majoring in accounting and works part-time at Price Waterhouse Coopers as an accountant.

Josh's mother was born in Michigan and his grandparents, uncles & aunties still live in Goodrich, Michigan.

"This is the start of many such initiatives and enhancements that USACA intends to make to its High Performance program", Mr Beazley continued. "Our goal is to be highly competitive in world cricket and undertake a professional approach to our recruitment and selection, preparation and performance on the field. This is the first step in this approach and I look forward to welcoming Josh 'home' and watching him in action during these trial games".

The USA National Men's Squad of 14 for the ICC WCL tournament in Bermuda will be announced next week.